Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhorn: Iowa Time Machine July 29, 1960

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On July 29, 1960, Clyde Kluckhorn passed away. One of the leading anthropologists of the 20th century, Kluckhorn was born in LaMars before helping redefine cross-cultural studies in the United States.

Clyde Kluckhohn was born in Le Mars, Iowa, on January 11, 1905, the son of real estate and insurance broker Clyde Clofford and Caroline Maben, who died in childbirth. Adopted by his maternal uncle at age five, he began high school in Le Mars before attending Culver Military Academy in Indiana and graduating from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, educational moves that reflected both family resources and his growing mobility across regions. He briefly attended Princeton University in 1922, leaving due to poor health, and, on his doctors’ advice, relocated to the high, dry climate of New Mexico, where rancher Evon Vogt encouraged him to learn the Navajo language and customs.

A seven‑month stay on the Vogt sheep ranch and a subsequent solitary packhorse trip, during which he became fluent in Navajo, culminated in his 1927 travel narrative To the Foot of the Rainbow, an early blend of adventure and ethnographic observation. In 1924, Kluckhohn entered the University of Wisconsin, majoring in classics and serving as student body president, then used a Rhodes Scholarship to study Greek, Latin, and anthropology at Oxford from 1928 to 1930, followed by further study at the University of Vienna, where he underwent psychoanalysis. After returning to the United States, he taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico, then left for doctoral work at Harvard, completing his Ph.D. in 1936 and remaining on the Harvard faculty for the rest of his life, becoming a full professor in 1946.

From this base, he pursued long‑term fieldwork among Navajo communities as well as Zuni, Mormons, Texas homesteaders, and Hispanic residents in New Mexico, while publishing on cultural values, personality, and comparative ethics. Alongside academic work, he held wartime and postwar administrative posts, including service in the School for Overseas Administration, co‑leading a Joint Morale Survey for U.S. military and information agencies, consulting for the Departments of Defense and State, and directing Harvard’s Russian Research Center from 1947 to 1954, despite limited formal expertise in Russian studies. #Iowa #OTD #History #Anthropology #Culture